


Stockholm Syndrome

by itallstartedwithdefenestration



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Canon-AU, M/M, also there will be mind-control, and did I mention angst, and evil!Tony, and sex, this is going to be angsty as FUCK
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-09-21
Updated: 2012-10-22
Packaged: 2017-11-14 18:42:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/518338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/itallstartedwithdefenestration/pseuds/itallstartedwithdefenestration
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>"Find Anthony Stark. He is of Midgard, but I need him."</i> </p><p>Tony's trapped in the Afghanistan desert. Retribution comes unexpectedly in the form of an Aesir god with sharp emerald eyes and a predilection for taking over the world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“Please,” is the first thing Tony Stark says when the young soldier—really a kid in his opinion, and when the fuck did it start being okay to send them this young to these war-torn shitholes—leans in with his peace fingers for the camera. “No gang signs.” 

The kid drops his hand, and Tony pats him once on the knee. “Kidding, put it up. Put it right here.” He adjusts his sunglasses and the soldier pulls up a huge grin— _look, guys,_ Tony’s sure he’ll Facebook status later tonight, _I was in a picture with the Merchant of Death._

Except the guy taking the picture doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing, and Tony’s never had any patience with people who can’t work technology, and he’s about to reach over and grab the camera and do it himself, but then the bomb detonates. It’s loud as fuck and leaves a ringing in Tony’s ears even from inside the Jeep. He flinches instinctively, looking around for the source. Clouds of smoke, fire, and ash reign down from in front of them, along with bits and pieces of the Jeep that caught the explosive. 

“Shit!” says Tony, his heart pounding so hard he thinks it’ll burst through his ribs. Everyone’s moving out, yelling orders, brandishing guns the sizes of tree branches; automatically Tony starts sliding out of his seat too, but the young soldier—not a kid anymore, not after this—tells him to _stay inside._

Moments later, his brains are splashed against the Jeep window in a spray of crimson. 

_Okay, no,_ Tony thinks wildly, wrenching open the door and getting out, ducking out of the line of fire and hurrying to a large rock on the side of the road. He crouches behind it, getting dust and ash on his suit and not really caring, considering the circumstances. His Stark phone is in his pocket and he pulls it out; dials Pepper’s number—not that he’s sure what she could do for him now, but god it would be nice to hear her voice before he gets shattered to pieces—and then notices the bomb next to him. ‘Stark Industries’ is written across the side in bold, white capitals, and Tony barely has time to scramble to his feet, thinking, _fuck, fuck, fuck,_ before it explodes, flattening him to the ground. There’s a terrible ringing in his ears, and the dust from the desert ground flies into his nose, into his eyes. His sunglasses have been knocked off, and he’s not sure where his phone is. 

Pain swells in his chest, and he lifts his head to look. Blood is spreading under his shirt, dark and red and ugly. With trembling fingers, he rips it open at the buttons, and observes for a moment the wound, which is deep and (probably) fatal. 

Then Tony’s head falls back, and he passes out. 

\--

_Two months earlier:_

The destruction of Jötunheim was imminent. Loki stood on the edge of the Bifrost, wind streaking through his hair, and watched as the world—technically his home planet, but he didn’t think about that—crumbled into space, into nothingness. He stared into the abyss of time and space and thought, _now, now they will see what a true leader I can be. Now even Father will have to acknowledge my potential. When he awakens, he will crown me king, and Thor will have to fall to his knees before my throne._

Except then Thor showed up, Thor with Mjölnir in his hand and that gods-awful ‘changed outlook on life’. He destroyed the Rainbow Bridge, breaking the steady flow of chaos that had been ripping Jötunheim apart, then grabbed Loki and held onto him, like he’d been the one in danger of falling. 

“Brother,” said Thor, looking at Loki with an intensity that was startling even for him. “You must stop this madness; you must stop fighting.”

“Stop fighting?” Loki repeated, a bit sarcastically. “What, coming from you? Thor, the warrior, the king? You, who would destroy entire cities just to watch them burn.”

“I have changed,” Thor said gruffly. “You know this, brother. Midgard has changed me.”

Loki knew. He knew all about Thor’s visit to the home of the mortals; how that one girl whom Thor knew for approximately two Midgardian days changed his entire outlook on life. He opened his mouth to snap something about Thor’s inability to see Jane anymore since he’d broken the Bifrost, but before he could get the words out Odin came striding up, awake, incensed, and still very much the king of Asgard. 

“Loki,” he hissed. “You have gone expressly against my wishes, the wishes of your mother, and threatened the safety of this realm by attempting to rip Jötunheim apart. There is no place in Asgard for someone who makes such rash, reckless decisions.”

This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. Confused— _isn’t this what you wanted, Father? For Laufey to be murdered? For Jötunheim to be removed from Yggdrasil’s branches?_ —he started:

“Look to Thor for examples of reckless decisions—” but Odin grabbed him from Thor’s tight grasp before he could finish and hit him across the face, backhanded, one of the large rings he wore breaking Loki’s skin. Thor made a sound, but Odin ignored him and grabbed Loki by the front of his leather garments. 

“You have betrayed us all,” he said. “You have attempted to commit genocide, a heinous crime. For this, and for disrupting the peace upon this day, you shall be punished most severely.” He twisted his hands to get a better grip on his adopted son—and Loki vanished. 

Thor’s mouth dropped open. “Brother—” he started, as if he could bring him back.

Odin’s eye narrowed. “Loki’s tricks are going to be his downfall someday,” he said. And then, to Heimdall, who was standing with his arms crossed, watching impassively, he said:

“Find him.”

\--

Darkness. That was all Loki knew for several minutes after he dropped from his father’s grasp. He could feel his magic twisting inside of him, struggling to keep him from being crushed by the heavy weight of the gases and the infinite expanse of space as he flew between realms. He hesitated, held onto the last grasps of consciousness for a few seconds, then let go, shutting his eyes and allowing himself to fall where he may. 

When he awoke, he was on Midgard. 

It didn’t take long for him to figure it out, from the sounds and the pace and the smoke— _and no wonder mortals died,_ he thought once he’d realized where he was, _with all this pollution_ —but it took a while to get used to it. He had to go get clothes that weren’t his leather-and-metal getup—because people looked at him like what he was wearing wasn’t usual, and while part of him wanted to blast them all with his staff, the other part of him still longed, in a twisted, darkened way, for acceptance—and ended up getting into a fight with a saleslady over Midgardian money. 

“But sir, you can’t buy this shirt and these pants with no cash!”

“Listen to me, mortal. I am Loki, of Asgard, and I will purchase your garments in any way I choose.”

(He ended up getting arrested and had to set one of his clones in the cell while he escaped through the barred window by turning into a thin, emerald green snake.)

And then he got a job. By all the laws of the universe, he knew he shouldn’t have one, because he was the once and future king of Asgard, but he was staying in one of those drab little hovels the mortals called an ‘apartment’, and while it was not exactly the most hygienic place he’d ever stayed in—the cooking device, for example, had tiny bugs scuttling all around inside of it; and the machine that kept Loki’s food cold without spoiling it had a sticky substance clinging to the sides that smelled faintly of sugar—it was better than nothing. And apparently it cost money to stay in, and Loki resented having to stoop down to the level of these Midgardians, but it was better than going back to Asgard, where he’d be punished and isolated and possibly tortured. He worked at an electronics store—apparently they weren’t referring to fruit when they spoke of their communications devices—and learned things: how to use a phone, a computer, an iPod. He caught on quickly, of course, because he was Loki and magic was his forte, and these devices used magic in a roundabout way; within a month Loki had WiFi and a laptop and was, although he was not exactly happy about it, well on his way to becoming a permanent member of this race. 

But then he heard about Tony Stark. 

It was a slow morning at work, and Loki was sitting behind his desk drinking Starbucks and listening to Wagner—the mythology was a little off, and he disliked the portrayal of his character, but _The Ring Cycle_ had beautiful music anyway—when his attention was grabbed by one of his coworkers shouting excitedly: 

“Look, Lisa, I told you! _That’s_ the Merchant of Death!” 

Loki lifted his sharp emerald eyes away from his computer screen and towards the front of the store. His coworker had his beefy arm wrapped around his girlfriend’s shoulders and was staring, entranced, into the television, where a strikingly attractive man in a pinstripe suit and tie was making a speech on ‘advanced weapons technology for Stark Industries’. 

“I’m not saying I’m doing _better_ than my father,” the man said, grinning rakishly into the camera. “But I’ve certainly progressed further than he ever could have.” This was met with a round of applause from off-camera, and Loki quirked an eyebrow. His eyes cut to the banner beneath the podium where the man stood—the caption read, “Tony Stark, billionaire and heir of Stark Industries, introduces new plans for what he says will be called ‘The Jericho’”. 

“Mr. Stark,” called a woman from somewhere in the room, “when are you planning on releasing the Jericho?”

“Tonight, eight p.m., my place; I’ll provide the whiskey if you bring lingerie,” Tony replied instantly, winking, and everyone laughed. Loki twitched his lips, amused; mortals, for all their other shortcomings, certainly were comfortable when it came to discussing sex. 

“No, serious answer,” said Tony after a bit. “One month from now. I’ll showcase it in Kunar Province. They won’t know what hit them, and Stark Industries will be about a million dollars richer than it is now. And then I can afford a plane to go on the deck of my yacht.” 

More laughter. Loki drew his brows together and made a mental note to look up ‘yacht’ later. 

Then Tony went on, answering more questions, occasionally making quips, flirting lightly with most of the women and a few of the men. Loki was drawn in by him, by his charisma and his charm, in a way he hadn’t been in several hundred Midgardian years. Tony wasn’t just attractive, with that softly messed-up brown hair, the way his lips would draw into a grin over his teeth every time someone would laugh at his jokes. He was also smart, for a mortal. He talked about science and quantum mechanics and the engineering that went into building the weapons, and though most of the terms he used were ones that Loki did not recognize, he got the basic concepts. 

When it cut to commercial, Loki took a sip of his coffee, paused _Götterdämmerung,_ and typed Tony’s name into Google. Images of the man came up, as well as a Wikipedia article and two CNN posts. He skimmed the CNN headlines— _Merchant of Death sends nuclear warheads skyrocketing over Atlantic_ and _Tony Stark to continue his father’s legacy “for as long as I feel like it”_ —then clicked on Wikipedia’s link. (Loki loved what was called ‘the free encyclopedia’; although he’d never admit it out loud, he owed it his basic, rudimentary introduction to the mortal world.) 

_Anthony Edward Stark, son of Howard and Maria Stark, is a self-proclaimed “genius billionaire playboy” and one of the world’s leading names in modern weapons technology. He is the current leader of Stark Industries, and has manufactured well over one thousand weapons for the United States Marine Corps, as well as the Army and the Navy. In addition to weapons, Stark also designs his own technology—his house is run by an artificial intelligence system known as JARVIS—and has produced an entire line of communications devices, including the Stark phone and the Stark laptop._

Loki’s thin, fine eyebrow crept up his forehead; who knew mortals could possess intelligence like this? He read on, skimming through the parts about how long the company had been running and the names of all the missiles Tony had built, until he got to the section labeled ‘personal life’. 

_As suave and charming as he is now, Tony Stark’s childhood was not a happy one. His father, Howard Stark, was cold and distant; Tony himself described him in an interview as “one of the most emotionless men I have ever met… he didn’t love me and I sure as hell didn’t love him”. Tony’s mother, Maria, passed away when Tony was only six years old, leaving Howard to raise the child on his own. However, Tony grew up quickly; with no one to care for him outside of providing him with meals and a roof over his head, Tony resorted to learning the facts of life on his own. Although his attempts at impressing Howard were futile—reportedly, an eight-year-old Tony once brought his father a completed replica of a molecule of DNA, only to be brushed off—Tony grew up to become the genius Howard was renowned as. He graduated from high school at fifteen and went on to study engineering, physics, and chemistry at—_

Loki stopped reading, then, his coffee cup suspended halfway to his lips. His mind kept jumping back to phrases in the article: _‘his father… was cold and distant’; ‘one of the most emotionless men I have ever met…’; ‘attempts at impressing… were futile’._ He knew how that felt; knew how it was to be overlooked, to be cast aside, despite all your endeavors at proving your brilliance. Odin had done it to him often, both as a child and more recently. So had Thor. So had everyone. 

Until this moment, Loki had assumed he was the only one being undermined. 

A small smile began to thread its way across his lips; an idea began to form in the back of his mind. He set to work with the plans simmering in his brain, and his coworkers—the ones who weren’t terrified to look at him for fear that something _odd_ might happen to them later—saw something deadly in his eyes, something evil and cold and broken. 

\--

A month after his initial discovery of Tony Stark, Loki feels as though it’s finally time to go find the man, to meet him, to turn him over into the hands of the elegant, haunted darkness that has been part of Loki’s life ever since he found out about his true heritage. He knows Tony has two homes—one in New York City, one in Los Angeles—but that he frequents the Los Angeles one more and that he’s almost never at home anyway. (Press conferences are a big part of Tony’s life.) Loki’s plan is simple—he’s going to go to the house, wait for Tony, place a temporary muting spell over him (because let’s face it, Tony talks too damn much, and Loki’s nickname isn’t Silvertongue because of his skin color), then explain to him in the simplest terms about Asgard, about his plans for taking control of the Nine Realms. Tony is sure to want to join in; Loki can read his expressions, in the interviews and the pictures, and he’s _bored._

(Also, there’s a slightly exhausted look about Tony, a sadness that shows up in his self-hating smirk, that makes Loki relate to him even more, but he doesn’t want to think about that too much, not yet.)

He quits his job at the electronics store; hands in his papers at the apartment complex, along with a slight wave of his hand so that the landlord doesn’t ask him to pay for the last month’s rent. He sets out in his best Midgardian garments—slate gray suit, jade tie, his hair slicked back from his face—and decides that if he doesn’t find Tony today, he will stay in a hotel overnight and find the information via less kindly means tomorrow. (And by _less kindly_ he means he will force the answer out of someone’s brain, an experience which he knows—thanks to that quim Sif and her friends Volstagg and Hogun—is incredibly painful.) He has just started trying to hail a taxi when there’s a loud crack of thunder from an angry-looking dark cloud; moments later Loki is pummeled backwards against the concrete by none other than Thor, who looks both furious and delighted, all at once. Bystanders stare unabashedly at the strange man in a red cape who has flattened the dark-haired businessman to the ground, and Loki, despite feeling like his ribs are cracked, manages to transport them away, leaving behind nothing but a cloud of emerald smoke and the faint scent of ice. 

When they land, they are on the outskirts of the city, and Thor is still gripping the lapels of Loki’s suit. He’s shaking, though from anger or excitement Loki cannot tell. 

“Brother,” Thor booms. “We have searched the Nine Realms for you ever since you vanished from our father’s grasp two months ago. Heimdall only just managed to catch a glimpse of you this morning, as you were finishing your breakfast and preparing to depart your living space.”

Loki frowns. “Why search, Thor?” he asks, deliberately not calling him _brother_ in return and noticing the way Thor’s face falls. “Are I not better off here, on Midgard, suffering among the mortals, than back in Asgard with you and Odin?”

“Father would have words with you,” is Thor’s reply, though he won’t meet Loki’s eyes. “He claims your punishment is still to be carried out, that you must come home.”

“Home?” repeats Loki, sneering now. “What home? Jötunheim? That is my true home, you know. I am one of the Frost Giants, or did your father fail to mention that in his extensive search for me?” He allows his skin to turn blue, the sapphire shade sliding across his arm, raising his markings, and Thor jerks back, the cold burning him, the color repulsing him. Loki laughs, and it’s brittle and harsh and broken, like shattering glass. 

“I can see you were unprepared for that, _brother,”_ he snarls, changing back to his Aesir form and noticing Thor’s discomfort battling with pity on his face. “I’m sure you wish less to return to Asgard with me now than you did a minute ago, is it not so?” 

Thor swallows. “Please,” he says. “I just want you home. We can discuss this there, if you wish. But I must get you back; Father wishes to see you—”

“For punishment only,” Loki mutters.

“—and Mother would speak to you as well.” 

Loki tenses for a moment, then turns away from Thor, bitterness mixing with longing for the life he thought he knew and twisting his features. “I have no home to return to,” he says finally. “Tell them I send my deepest regrets. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have business to attend to.” 

“What business?” Thor asks. Loki hesitates; he considers telling Thor for a moment, considers saying, _I found a mortal like you did, except mine is better,_ but then decides against it. Thor will not care, or he will go to Tony and ruin Loki’s chances of getting him to fight on his side, and he can’t have that. So he stays quiet, and Thor lets out a sigh.

“Lying as usual,” he says, and when Loki tenses up for the second time, subconsciously letting his guard down as he struggles with his anger, Thor grabs his shoulder. Before Loki has a chance to react, to do anything other than raise his eyebrows and open his mouth, the portal to Asgard is opened again, and Loki and Thor are transported upward and onto the repaired Bifrost, where Odin waits, staff in hand, a grim smile on his face.

“Thank you, Heimdall,” he says, “for finding my treacherous son.”

“Glad to be of service, Odin Allfather,” Heimdall replies, bowing low. 

Once he’s gone, Odin grabs Loki by the hair and slams him down against the bridge, hard. A tiny trickle of blood runs from his nose, from a corner of his lips. Guards come on fleet-footed horses and bind Loki’s hands behind his back with chains that effectively remove both his magic and his ability to speak. He glares at all of them, wishing they were back on Midgard so he could take a gun and shoot them all in the heads, then is forced to his feet and jostled forward by Odin. 

“Welcome back to Asgard,” the Allfather snarls, low, into Loki’s ear, and Loki wishes he had killed him when he had the chance. 

His punishment turns out to be those damn chains on his wrists for, according to Odin, an “as yet unknown length of time”, and solitary confinement in the lowest chambers of the castle, where the cold coming from the Casket of Ancient Winters prevents anyone from entering except on matters of extreme urgency. They feed him infrequently, and when they do it’s never much more than a hunk of bread, a slab of cheese, a cut of salted pork. Loki has trouble opening his mouth to eat, because of the binding charm on his vocal chords, and while Odin does send someone to hand-feed him his food, more often than not the person simply sets the plate in front of him, sneers ‘good luck’, and walks back out. 

During this period, Loki sends for Fandral, the closest thing to a friend he has ever had in this world—as well as his ex-lover from many centuries prior, though Loki doesn’t think about that very often. Fandral takes down a piece of parchment and a quill, and slowly, painstakingly, Loki manages to twist his wrists in the cuffs and write, backwards, in the simplest terms, what he wants Fandral to do for him. 

“Suppose I cannot find this man,” is what Fandral says, when he’s read Loki’s shaky message. 

Loki narrows his eyes and forces his upper lip to curl, and Fandral laughs out loud. “You and your tricks,” he says, but Loki isn’t joking around, and Fandral knows it. He stands, taking the parchment and folding it carefully into his garments.

“I will do my best,” he says quietly, then turns and walks out. 

With no magic to aid him in changing forms so the cold will affect him less, Loki lies down on the floor, his hands clasped behind his back, and he shivers. 

\--

Even in his half-conscious state, Tony Stark is aware of a searing pain in the center of his chest, a sensation like his ribs are being cracked open and his heart is being torn out. He screams and writhes under the chloroform-soaked cloth pressed to his mouth and nose until the scent makes him pass out. And even then, the anesthesia isn’t strong enough to completely soften the effects of… whatever it is that’s happening to him. He feels fingers in his rib cage, _touching his heart,_ and on some level he realizes that he is probably going to die here, that he will never see Pepper or Rhodey again. 

When he wakes up fully again, he’s lying flat on his back on a cold metal table, dressed in clothes that are not his own. There’s a buzzing sensation in his head, and his chest feels oddly compressed. Reaching up, shaking slightly though he doesn’t know why, Tony pinches a strip of plastic that has been pushed into his nose and pulls. The whole thing slides out at once, covered in fluids, making him snort and cough. He touches his chest, and is startled when his fingers come in contact with a hard, metal object in the center. Wires are leading out from under the shirt he’s wearing to the table beside his bed, wires which, if he follows them with his eyes, connect to a box that looks suspiciously like one of the car batteries he worked on when he was fifteen and had to be a car mechanic for the summer.

Shaking worse than before, Tony rips open his shirt, and then he sees it: the metal thing is _inside of his chest;_ the skin around it is scarred and red and looks ruined. _What the fuck,_ he thinks, and then he notices, for the first time, the man standing off to one side of the room. He’s dark-skinned, short, and shaving in a grimy, cracked mirror. 

“Hey,” Tony calls hoarsely, and the man turns. He smiles, but it’s not friendly.

“So, you’re awake,” he says. “I must congratulate myself on a job well done.” He puts down his razor and wipes the shaving cream off his face before taking an already opened bottle of aged wine and tilting it back against his lips. Suddenly very aware of the dry, burning sensation at the back of his throat, Tony struggles to sit up and reach for the drink himself. 

The man shakes his head. “Lie back,” he says. “It’s dangerous to move right now. You are hooked up to a car battery, Mr. Stark.”

So he hadn’t been mistaken. “Uh,” Tony says. “I’m no car expert, but isn’t that not okay? The electrodes would kill me—”

“In this case, no,” says the man. He finishes his wine and sets the empty bottle down on the ground. Then he walks over and touches the metal plate in Tony’s chest. “This,” he says, “is an electromagnet. It is keeping the shrapnel from the bomb you were hit by out of your heart. If I hadn’t cut you open and put this in, you would be dead now, Mr. Stark. I saved your life. You owe me a debt.”

Tony struggles to sit up again, and this time the man lets him, placing the car battery in his lap. “Shrapnel?” Tony repeats, licking his lips to try and keep them from feeling so dry. “I have that in me now?”

“And you will for the rest of your life,” says the man. “Unless you are able to perform a miracle surgery on yourself, which I doubt even you could do, with all your gadgets and technology. But don’t worry. The electromagnet won’t kill you.”

Tony laughs harshly. “I wish I was dead,” is what he says, remembering the name of his father’s company—the company he’s the fucking head of, for Christ’s sake—on the side of the bomb that almost took his life. 

“You are very successful at what you do, Mr. Stark,” the man says, walking back to the cracked mirror and picking up his razor again. “You should be proud.”

Here he is, in this country, advocating missiles that harm more than they help, and he’s supposed to feel _good_ about that? Tony frowns slightly, staring down at the car battery, then thinks to ask:

“What’s your name?”

The man nicks his skin a little, and a small trickle of blood runs down his neck. He wipes it off with a cloth and turns, and this time the smile on his face is a little friendlier. “Yinsen,” he says. “My name is Yinsen.”

\--

Tony hates it in the cave. He hates the enclosed space, hates the dank air, hates the way the walls feel clammy and dry at the same time. More than that, he hates the car battery attached to his chest; it might be keeping him alive, but hell if he’s going to be grateful to have a fucking magnet inside of him. Yinsen is friendly enough, but he seems to have his own things to do—after the first few days he disappears, leaving a note that says only, _do not exit this cave or you will be in trouble_ —so Tony gets to work building a slightly less unwieldy device to keep his heart beating. Alone all day for the better part of a week, he has enough time to remember most of what his father did towards the giant arc reactor that powers his house in Los Angeles—the arc reactor was Howard’s invention, but even as a child Tony paid enough attention to what he was doing on the blueprints and with the machines to understand the basic concepts. He constructs a miniaturized version of it, a small, blue, softly glowing device that will keep the shrapnel away from his heart without needing a car battery to power it. It’s not _healthy,_ not really, to have palladium inside his chest, but it’s the best he can do right now, considering the fact that he’s in a cave in Afghanistan with only a box of scraps. 

A few days after Tony builds the arc reactor, Yinsen returns, carrying blueprints and boxes full of metal. He seems rushed, barely glancing at Tony’s chest; Tony is reminded of his father, and how he was unable to ever get his attention either, and part of him wants to yell, _I am glowing, and you’ve been gone for a whole week, why aren’t you asking me about this?!_

“Tony,” says Yinsen. “Today is your lucky day.”

“I’m getting out?” Tony asks hopefully. “Because I can tell you, Yinsen, the first place I’m going to go is Burger King; I need a cheeseburger and about fifty pounds of fries—”

“No,” interrupts Yinsen. “No, today you get to provide assistance towards the greater good of our society here.” He waves his hand over his shoulder, and before Tony can ask him what he means by ‘the greater good of our society’—because damn, that sounds suspiciously Third Reich-ish—five tall, dark-skinned men appear, carrying machine guns at their sides. One of them snaps his eyes to Tony’s chest and he mutters something Arabic-sounding in Yinsen’s ear; Yinsen shrugs and replies quietly, in the same language. 

Then, to Tony, he says, “My friend, these are the Ten Rings. They are an organization that greatly admires the work you do with Stark Industries. They would like you to build them a Jericho missile, using these materials here.” He gestures at the box he’s brought in, and Tony raises his eyebrows. 

“Yinsen,” he says, “no. Tell them no. You saw the destruction that bomb caused—”

A tiny frown creases the space between Yinsen’s eyebrows. He makes another gesture, and suddenly Tony’s being held at gunpoint, his face pressed into someone’s stomach. Yinsen walks over and pinches the end of Tony’s ear until his nails break the skin, tilting his head up towards the ceiling. Everyone’s yelling in various languages and Tony’s wishing he’d pulled the electromagnet out of his chest while he had the chance and allowed himself to die. 

“Did I forget to mention, Mr. Stark?” Yinsen asks, and the way he smiles is terrifying. “I am the leader of this organization. And if you fail to do what I say… we will kill you.”

“I’m wondering which is the better alternative here,” Tony mutters, and then someone smashes the butt of a gun against the back of his head, and he falls forward, pain blossoming in his skull in the moments before he succumbs, for a third time, to the dark state of unconsciousness.

\--

He’s placed in a room; dark, quiet, set off from the rest of the cave. They tell him he’s got a while to build the Jericho, but once Yinsen runs out of patience, Tony will know. Someone comes by once a day with food—water, stale bread, and the occasional slab of meat, although Tony won’t touch the meat after he sees maggots crawling around inside one hunk. He wishes he could have his artificial intelligence system with him, but there’s no way that’s going to happen, so he makes do with his own brain. There are bolts and scrap metal and drills in the boxes Yinsen has provided, and although Tony knows what he’s _supposed_ to be building, he can’t bring himself to assemble a missile for someone he’d trusted, someone who had saved his _life,_ for fuck’s sake. He draws up blueprints on the sheets they give him, putting in intricate details, working late into the night—although as time goes on, Tony finds that night and day are becoming more and more foreign to him. He welds for the first time in years, sparks flying, burning his clothes and, once, his skin. He builds a weapon, but it’s not the Jericho. It’s not even close. Like the original electromagnet-and-car-battery set up, it runs on electrodes and power—his arc reactor, to be exact. He calls it the Mark I and spends his days figuring out how to get in and out of it when Yinsen and the Ten Rings aren’t around. 

There comes the day, of course, when Yinsen wants to see the Jericho, and Tony tells him it’s not quite ready yet, and ends up receiving a burn on his back and a warning of ‘one more day, Stark, or it’s your head in my hands’. He polishes the Mark I; tests its shooting capabilities; makes sure the arc reactor is still capable of running it. He tries not to think about how Yinsen is probably the thousandth person he’s trusted who betrayed him. He eats his stale bread and stares into the mirror, at his thin, dark-eyed, tired reflection, and finds that hating himself is getting easier and easier.

The following day, two members of the Ten Rings wake Tony up by shoving his head with their guns and yelling at him in their language. “Calm the fuck down, cupcake,” says Tony, standing up, knowing they can’t understand him. “I’m conscious.”

They take him to Yinsen, who is staring at a gold-framed picture. He adjusts his glasses and glances at Tony, and for a second there is so much sadness in his gaze that Tony wonders if maybe this all isn’t just some huge mistake. 

“My family,” says Yinsen, gesturing at the picture. “They are dead now, all of them. After my village was bombed, and I was the only surviving member, I came here. I met these men, befriended them; they saved my life, same as I saved yours. I formed the Ten Rings to remember my family, Stark. We will not rest until a bomb has been created that can effectively demolish the people who killed mine.” Then he holds out his hand. “Give me the blueprints. I wish to see them before I see the actual device.”

Tony hesitates. “Come with me,” he says. “They’re back here. But you have to wait while I get them.”

Yinsen narrows his eyes but agrees, and Tony goes into the room he’s been using and gets into the Mark I. “Don’t fail me now, baby,” he whispers, and powers up. 

There are explosions, surprised yells. Tony blasts several men out of the way at once with the gun on his hand, then fires another shot against the boxes containing the explosives that the Ten Rings have been studying. A fireball climbs to the cave ceiling and there is a deafening crash as several tons of rock fall to the ground, killing some men and blocking the others from reaching Tony quickly. He goes to the entrance of the cave, blasting guys as he runs, and finds himself face-to-face with Yinsen. 

“You will not win this, Stark!” Yinsen yells, holding up his machine gun.

Tony lifts his arm. “Go join your family,” he says, and fires. In the aftermath of the explosions, amid confused yelling and futile attempts at breaking Tony’s suit, he leaves the cave, sending streaks of fire along, killing people, burning the ground. At last he reaches what he wanted to see: boxes labeled ‘Stark Industries’, all stacked up beside the road. He shoots them all, and they explode, loudly, in the way a gas tank explodes if it’s hit by a burning cigarette. He flies out of the smoke, aiming away from the village, like a phoenix rising from the ashes. 

And then Tony’s circuitry fails, and he falls.

The wind whips past him, rustling the metal sheets holding his suit together, and he squeezes his eyes shut. What an injustice, if he were to die _now,_ after surviving god knows how long in that fucking cave, with those fucking people. He crashes into the sand, and it flies up around him and the hole his body creates. Metal shreds off like paper, scattering in every direction. When friction stops him, he’s cut up, bleeding; the inside of his mouth tastes like copper and salt. He looks around at the ruined Mark I, at the searing-hot white sand, at the blazing sun above him. 

“Not bad,” he mutters, licking sweat off his upper lip and allowing his head to fall back in exhaustion. 

\--

Fandral knows that what Loki wants is unrealistic. He studies the parchment the trickster god gave him in the lowest chambers of the castle— _find Anthony Stark,_ it reads, in shaky, almost illegible writing. _He is of Midgard, but I need him._ There is about a one in a million chance that Fandral will find this Anthony, and even if he does, he’s not sure it’ll be the right one. But then Loki’s never been picky about who he has sex with, and Fandral’s ninety-nine percent positive that’s what he wants this mortal for. 

He goes to Midgard quietly, at night, providing a semi-believable lie to Heimdall about his intentions on Earth. It’s not an attractive place, this habitat of the mortals, and Fandral thinks, _look at what I go through for you, Loki. You had better be grateful._

Finding Anthony Stark is not an easy task. Though his name is everywhere—the Midgardians seem to be searching for him too, strangely enough—his actual presence is unidentifiable. Fandral queries people he sees in the street for the whereabouts of Anthony, and after they’re finished giving him looks like he’s asked for their souls, they tell him he was last heard of in Afghanistan, in Kunar Province, three months ago. 

“Where’s Afghanistan?” Fandral asks, confused, and this time the people just walk away, eyebrows raised, looking annoyed and a little afraid. 

Eventually, though, he does find Afghanistan, thanks to a kind older woman who seems to take pity on him—probably because, in her words, he “smells like a horse and dresses like a Viking”. (“What’s a Viking?” Fandral asks her, but she just laughs.) She tells him he has to take a plane to get there, but he doesn’t know what a plane is and teleportation seems quicker, so he thanks her and vanishes, leaving her stunned, the mug of tea she was about to offer him trembling in her outstretched hand. 

Afghanistan is barren, dusty, and dry. Sand whips up and into Fandral’s eyes, hair, and clothes, and he wishes Loki could’ve come because outside of teleporting, he’s no good with magic. He walks along, shielding his eyes as best he can, until the winds die down a little—and then, by some miracle, he sees a man walking. He’s short, far shorter than Loki, and wearing strange trousers and a shirt made of some soft-looking material. His chest is glowing, and Fandral wonders if he’s got powers Loki doesn’t know about. As the warrior god watches, the man falls to his knees, coughing. 

_Mortals,_ Fandral thinks, disgusted, but nevertheless he’s pretty sure this is Anthony Stark, because he certainly matches the descriptions he heard from the old woman. He walks forward until he is standing over Anthony, his body casting a welcoming shadow on the man.

“Anthony Stark?” he asks, and the mortal glances up.

“Are you a hallucination?” is the first thing out of his mouth. “Because I haven’t been taking drugs, and I haven’t been walking that long—goddammit, Pepper was right; I probably should’ve worn sunglasses.” He shakes his head, and Fandral draws his brows together in confusion— _what are sunglasses?_

“I am sorry, I’m not familiar with Pepper or sunglasses,” he says. “But I can assure you, I’m not a hallucination. I am here to take you to Asgard. You are Anthony Stark, yes?”

Anthony raises his eyebrows. “Yeah, that’s me,” he says, “but where—”

It’s enough that he’s confirmed his identity. Fandral can’t listen to that incessant babbling, not anymore. He sighs, and leans forward, gripping Anthony’s arm. He can’t teleport between realms, not yet, not the way Loki can, so he calls for Heimdall. Anthony is squirming, yelling, “What the fuck are you _doing_?!” but Fandral ignores him, and seconds later they are blasted up and away from this gods-forsaken place.

 _Oh Loki, I sure hope you know what you’re getting into with this one,_ he thinks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Isa thought of most of this shit. She's my muse and she's awesome.
> 
> Stockholm syndrome (n.) also known as capture-bonding, is a psychological phenomenon in which hostages express empathy and have positive feelings towards their captors, sometimes to the point of defending them.


	2. Chapter 2

There’s a wrenching behind his navel, and then Tony Stark is thrown forward, almost violently. It feels like his muscles are being pulled through a very tight, narrow tube; all around him he sees a kaleidoscope of colors, a swirling vortex of greens and blues and reds. He is vaguely aware of the other man’s hand still on his arm, and supposes he should be grateful for that, but mostly what he’s focusing on is trying not to vomit. 

When they land, they land hard, and Tony spills from his captor’s grip, rolling a bit before coming to a stop less than an inch away from the edge of wherever it is they’ve fallen—it’s some bridge type thing, made of a material that’s too thick to be considered glass but too heavy to be plastic. He can feel some sort of electricity crackling up from the bridge and into his body, making the arc reactor hum. The flashing of colors continues just below his eye; it is a moment before Tony realizes the colors are now coming from the bridge.

Behind him, he hears the other man getting up and walking over to him. “Anthony,” he starts, and Tony rolls over, wincing.

“If we’re going to be talking for a while, it has _got_ to be ‘Tony’,” he says. “C’mon, I was only ‘Anthony’ when I was in trouble for drinking too much liquor from Dad’s basement stash.”

The man holds his hand out, and Tony takes it, surprised by his strong grip. “Fandral,” he introduces himself. “It is a pleasure to meet you, Tony Stark.”

“Yeah, uh,” says Tony, trying to get up and discovering it is much easier to just lie here, with the electricity humming in his ears and the strange, star-ridden sky spinning above him. “That’s kind of really weird that you know my name; I mean, seriously, who are you, and where am I, and please tell me this is some sort of rescue mission Rhodey set up because honestly, I like pranks, especially when they involve my life being saved.”

Fandral frowns. “Who is Rhodey?” he asks, and maybe for the first time Tony notices, really _notices,_ his accent, and how strange it is—like he’s British, or maybe German, but not. 

“So you _aren’t_ with the Navy,” he says, and tries to laugh, but it comes out kind of flat. Fandral just keeps staring at him, like he doesn’t quite know what to do with him; after a moment, he holds his hand out again. 

“Come with me, Anthony,” he says.

“ _Tony,_ come on; you had it a second ago, Elvis.”

Fandral pauses, his eyebrows coming together. “I apologize, Anth—Tony, I do not understand—”

Tony just shakes his head and breathes out hard through his nose, taking Fandral’s hand and forcing himself to stand on uncertain legs. “Don’t worry about it,” he says. He unwraps the jacket from around his head and slips it back over his arms—the fabric is rough on his cut shoulders, but he’s too exhausted and confused to complain. They start down the bridge, the moving colors beneath their feet disorienting Tony—it’s like being in a rave, except colder—and are nearly to solid ground before a voice, unfamiliar and deep, calls to them:

_“How did you get past me, Fandral?”_

Fandral stops and winces, and Tony pauses as well. “Oh fuck,” he says, “there are more circus freaks?”

“Heimdall,” Fandral replies, ignoring Tony’s jab. “I thought you had seen us returning.”

“You know very well I had not,” Heimdall growls. “Although you called for me, I did not see you land on the Bifrost. Who is the mortal, Fandral, and what business does he have here?”

“No Midgardian has set foot in Asgard for several centuries. I thought I would take him here, show him around, then bring him back home.”

“Sorry, you keep mentioning Asgard, what’s Asgard?” Tony asks, loudly, but Fandral ignores him, keeping his eyes on Heimdall. Both of them are quiet for a long time; finally Heimdall says:

“Do not cause any trouble, Fandral,” and turns away. Fandral lets out a sigh of relief and takes Tony’s arm again. He wants to pull away, but his body is starting to feel weak, like he might collapse again; his throat burns and his head is throbbing, and for all that he breathes in he cannot quite get enough air. And he’s _tired,_ so fucking tired; betrayed and drained and exhausted. His eyelids are drooping and he keeps stumbling against Fandral as he is half-dragged away from the Bifrost. 

“Where’re we going?” he asks finally, slurring a bit like he’s drunk. “Where’s Asgard?”

“We are going to the castle of Odin,” Fandral says, his voice tight with irritation. “I shall allow Loki to explain the rest—once he gets his voice back.”

Tony perks up slightly at the mention of Loki—finally, something he recognizes, even through the haze of pain that has descended over him. “That’s a Norse god,” he says. “I know Loki—he did a lot of really weird shit, and no one trusted him, and didn’t he fuck a horse once?”

“Gods, Anthony, you do not shut up, do you?” Fandral jerks him along a little rougher, and Tony manages to force his cracked lips into a smile—at least he still knows how to push people to their limits. He’s opening his mouth to ask whether they’re going to see the horse Loki fucked or not when they arrive at the castle, and the sight of it renders Tony speechless. It’s massive, stretching nearly the length of two football fields, and—Tony guesses—taller than the Empire State Building. The entire building seems to be made of solid gold, which gleams and shines in the sunlight. Surrounding it on all sides are fields, luscious and green enough to make Tony’s eyes ache, and water, sparkling and lovely. Tony runs his tongue over his lips, suddenly hyperaware of his extreme thirst. 

“I’m guessing it’s out of the question for me to have a drink,” he says, gesturing at the water with his free hand, and Fandral shakes his head, hurrying Tony along and frowning. 

“Mortals,” he mutters, sounding disgusted. 

“Yeah, and that’s _another_ thing, Prince fucking Charming,” Tony says as they approach the front doors. “If you don’t like mortals—which by the way, what does that even make you; are you immortal?—why the hell did you bring me here?”

“I am immortal, yes,” Fandral says, lifting the knocker on the door and letting it fall with a clang, “and as I have already stated, I will allow Loki the privilege of explaining this situation to you.”

Tony snorts. “Jesus, you talk like I’m actually going to _meet_ Loki.” A light sweat has broken out on his skin, and his heart is racing so fast it’s starting to hurt. The wounds on his shoulders ache from the material digging into them, but the air is still cold, and he doesn’t want to take his jacket off. 

He is not aware of falling asleep until Fandral shakes him, waking him up just as the doors open and a guard appears. He lifts his staff, but Fandral holds his hand out, shaking his head rapidly.

“Do not announce my return to the Allfather,” he says. “Tell no one I have come back, and tell no one I have brought a mortal with me.” He goes inside, still dragging Tony along, and the doors shut behind them. 

The instant they are in the castle, Tony’s arc reactor begins humming louder than before, vibrating in his chest. Tiny electroshocks pulsate from its center to Tony’s heart, and he winces, gritting his teeth. “Hey, whatever the fuck you’ve got going on in here that’s making the palladium react like this, could you turn it off, just as a favor to me? I mean, seriously, you’ve established about a billion times that I’m a mortal, so you have to know that if I get electrocuted by my own device I’m not gonna survive the way you would—”

“Loki will take care of all of your concerns,” Fandral interrupts. “Come, we are late.” He leads Tony down long corridors, past guards; past large, empty rooms that smell faintly of incense and raw meat; past tapestries that hang, long and beautiful, along the walls. Several times, Tony opens his mouth to ask, again, where they are and what’s going on, but his arc reactor is really starting to hurt, and he can’t focus on much except the pain. 

After what feels like hours, they arrive at a second set of doors, less grand than the entrance, and Fandral pushes them open and leads Tony down a flight of stairs. The further they go, the colder it gets; Tony pulls his jacket harder, winces at the pain, and manages:

“Where are we, Antarctica?” before his legs give out and he stumbles. Fandral catches him just as he’s falling, and for the first time since they met back in Kunar Province, something like concern flashes across his face.

“Are you all right, Tony?”

“Just fucking peachy,” Tony snaps. 

Fandral sighs softly, and leads him to the bottom of the steps. Tony automatically heads for the glowing blue box at the center of the room—it’s emitting the cold air, and maybe there’s an off switch, because goddamn, it doesn’t need to be this temperature, not even in the middle of the summer—when he hears Fandral say:

“I have brought you Anthony Stark, Loki.”

“Loki?” Tony repeats, his voice too loud in the large chamber. He turns away from the blue box and, with an effort, manages to walk over to where Fandral is standing. He’s addressing a pale man, with startlingly emerald eyes and high, sharp cheekbones; his hands are tied behind his back, and he’s half-sitting, half-lying on the ground. His gaze flickers between Fandral and Tony, and he raises an eyebrow.

“Is this the correct mortal?” Fandral asks, and Tony frowns.

“Whoa, wait, what—”

Loki nods, then narrows his eyes. He stares at Tony, and the engineer sits down next to him, his exhaustion finally catching up to him. 

“So you’re Loki,” Tony says. 

A nod.

“Do you talk or what, because Fandral said you’d explain some shit to me, and I’m actually really wondering when I can go home—”

Loki shakes his head, glares at Fandral, and shifts his body weight so that he is facing Tony completely. He’s staring, now, just staring, and it’s starting to freak Tony out—not to mention the silent thing, or the fact that Fandral has said nothing since they first made eye contact. He’s opening his mouth to ask if he’s maybe on an episode of _Punk’d,_ or if this is _Doctor Who_ come to life and Loki’s the Doctor and Tony’s about to become a companion, when the doors at the top of the stairs open and two guards approach the three of them. Loki looks up, a worn, wary expression crossing his face; an expression Tony recognizes as one of his own, the way he’d look at the Ten Rings members, sometimes, when everything had been going on for over a week and he was starting to realize there was no way out.

“Odin Allfather requests your presence in the upper chambers,” says one of the guards. The other one reaches down and grabs Loki by the arm, hauling him to his feet. Loki wrenches his shoulder out of the man’s grasp, flexing his still-tied fingers behind his back, resentment and hatred burning in the backs of his eyes. 

“Wait, am I coming up?” Tony asks. “Because honestly, I can’t move.”

“You are to stay here,” Fandral says. “I will watch outside the room for any possible intruders.”

“If I die, you’re liable,” Tony says cheerfully to Loki, who rolls his eyes before being led away by the guards. Fandral follows them, and Tony collapses backwards, feeling the cold rising up, numbing his wounds. He stares at the ceiling until the vastness of the room makes him dizzy, and when he shuts his eyes all he can see is stars, and the vast kaleidoscope of colors from when he and Fandral came here—wherever _here_ is.

Eventually, he passes out, the arc reactor still clenching and humming in his chest like a live wire. 

\--

Loki is brought before Odin, who sits on his throne, the staff clenched in his right hand, a stack of parchments in his left. He seems annoyed at Loki’s presence, and Loki wishes he had the words to tell him that he was the one who requested Loki be summoned in the first place. There is no sign of Thor, or of his friends Sif, Hogun, and Volstagg. 

“Loki,” Odin starts. “Do you know why I have brought you before me today?”

There is a beat of silence. Loki can hear the guards in the back of the chamber trying to restrain their laughter, and even as he imagines impaling their heads with a spear, he feels his cheeks flushing. _Good jest, Allfather,_ he thinks, staring at the floor. _Asking a question to which I physically cannot provide an answer. How very humorous._

“I have summoned you in regards to the binding spell which I placed on you nearly one month ago,” Odin continues after a moment. “You have been without speech or magic, and restricted to the lowest chambers of my castle, all because you chose to try and destroy Jötunheim. Do you now regret your actions?”

Loki does not make any movements, just continues staring at the ground. He wonders at the irony of asking the god of lies a question such as that.

“Do you regret your actions?” Odin repeats.

Another moment of hesitation, then Loki nods, although of course he doesn’t regret his actions at all. He sees himself, in his mind, how his skin can change from pale to blue in seconds, and a shudder of revulsion passes over him. He will never regret what he tried to do to the Frost Giants, how he nearly obliterated his own race in the hopes that maybe he could work it in as a kind of absolution to himself for what he truly is. 

“Good,” Odin says, and suddenly the handcuffs are gone. Loki feels his magic returning in a sudden rush, and he flexes his fingers, watching tiny green sparks fly off their tips. A small smile flits across his face, and he looks up for the first time since he arrived in the hall.

Odin is glaring at him, as though he’s already done something wrong. “Do not think that just because I have returned your magic and restored your speech, you are free to roam as you please. There are to be restrictions on you until we can be certain of trusting you.”

“I am prepared to hear whatever you have planned for me, no matter how ridiculous it is,” Loki says, his voice hoarse from disuse. 

“You are forbidden from traveling between realms for six months. You shall not try and make contact with other worlds during this time. Should this occur, we shall bind you again and leave you at the mercy of the Frost Giants—and there is little chance they will still be on your side now. This is my final word. Do you accept?”

Six months is long enough, Loki thinks, to get Tony to be on his side. In six months, he and Tony can make so many plans; can come up with so many brilliant ideas. He shrugs, nods. Odin nods too, and Loki is allowed to leave. 

He cannot keep the smirk off his face as he heads back down to the lowest chambers of the castle, where Fandral and Tony are still waiting for him.

\--

When Tony wakes up, he is lying in a bed covered in thick, heavy furs, with a mattress that feels like feathers. It takes him a moment to notice that the pain in his chest is gone, as well as the aching in his shoulders, and that he is wearing clothes that are not his own. There is a candle on the engraved stand beside the bed, and he reaches out to run his fingers over the markings. 

“Don’t,” says an unfamiliar voice to his right, and he startles, turning, to find Loki standing next to the mattress, no longer handcuffed. His accent, like Fandral’s, is a mix of British and German. 

“Why not?” he asks, splaying his fingers over the furs. 

“You are still weak, Anthony. I do not wish for you to overexert yourself.”

Tony arches an eyebrow. “You kidding? I feel better than I have in months.” He shifts himself up against the pillows and runs a finger over the skin on his shoulder—it’s smooth, as though the Mark I never exploded on him, never burned him. “Although I am kind of wondering about that, and about who you are—I mean, Fandral did say I was going to get an explanation, and honestly, I think I’ve waited long enough.”

Loki smirks. “My name is Loki Laufeyson,” he says, “and I am the god of mischief… among other things. You, Anthony Stark, are on Asgard—or as some would call it, the Realm Eternal.”

Tony’s eyebrow creeps up further. “You’re kidding, right? I mean, I know you guys are supposed to be immortal or whatever, but seriously, I thought Fandral was joking about that—I mean, you aren’t _really_ Loki, right?”

For an answer, Loki extends his hand and allows a soft glow of some green light to hover around it for a moment before pulling back. 

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Tony says.

“Very eloquent.”

“So wait, what’d you say, Asgard?”

“Asgard,” Loki nods. “Home of the gods. Welcome, Anthony Stark.”

“Okay, no, seriously, that whole ‘Anthony’ thing has _got_ to stop—”

“I shall call you as I wish to.” Loki folds his arms across his chest and does that same thing from the basement where he narrows his eyes—and it doesn’t scare Tony exactly, but it sends a chill up his spine. 

“Yeah, whatever,” he says. “I mean, you could even call me by my last name if you wanted.”

“I may,” Loki replies, and both of them are smirking without realizing it. 

“So you’re immortal,” says Tony. “So you can’t die?”

Loki hesitates. “I could die, Stark,” he says, after a few seconds. “Just not the same way as you. It is complicated. You shall learn, in time.”

Tony, who had started staring at his arc reactor, trying to make a mental note to look at it later and figure out why the castle’s interior made it vibrate so much, suddenly glances up. “Wait, what do you mean, ‘in time’? Exactly how long are you planning on keeping me here, because I have a schedule to keep up with. I’m three months late for a press conference—Rhodey’s probably gonna kill me, Pepper’s probably fucking gone batshit wondering where I am—”

“You are to stay in Asgard for six months,” says Loki, quietly, and Tony’s mouth drops open.

“Just a second, Shakespeare,” he says. “Weren’t you listening? I have shit to do. I can’t just do a little vacation here with you and the other gods—what the fuck, wait a minute, who even lives here besides you, wait, that’s not the point, I _can’t stay here,_ Loki. I just can’t.”

There is a beat of silence. Then, slowly, Loki walks around to the other side of the bed, so that he’s closer to Tony. Without speaking, he reaches down and encircles his long fingers around Tony’s arc reactor. The physicist’s breath hitches at the back of his throat, but before he can say anything he feels that vibration starting up again, harder than before. For just a second, he thinks he is going into cardiac arrest, but then something inside him settles down, and he’s left feeling more whole than he did before the bomb exploded in Afghanistan.

Loki steps away; nods downwards, eyes on Tony’s chest. Slowly, uncertainly, Tony unbuttons his shirt and looks, and sees the arc reactor, now fused into his skin completely, the blue glowing from inside of him, part of him. His eyes widen, and he stares, his mouth working in silence. 

“I am a god, Stark,” is all Loki says. “And you are the most intelligent mortal I laid eyes on when I visited Midgard. We shall be good together, you and I.”

“I can’t stay,” Tony repeats, but with less conviction. He’s tracing the outline of the reactor with his fingers, wondering if he could have done that back on Earth, wondering where science stops and magic begins.

“What would you have to go home to?” Loki asks, and his voice is oddly soft, and Tony cannot bring himself to look up. “You are every bit as lost as I, Anthony. You cannot lose anything by staying here for a few months.”

Tony is quiet for a minute, still tracing his arc reactor. Then his lips twitch, and it’s that same self-loathing smirk Loki remembers from watching him on television. 

“Yeah,” he says. “Okay, yeah, I’ll stay here. But I’m gonna need someone to turn up the air, because _seriously,_ it is freezing in here.”

Loki smiles faintly. “I believe that can be arranged,” he says, and then he walks out, and the expression in his eyes is brittle and unbalanced and a little bit insane.

He meets Fandral halfway down the corridor, and claps him once on the shoulder. “Thank you for all your help, Fandral,” he says. 

“My pleasure, Loki,” Fandral replies. He glances at the shut door, then at Loki, and a tiny frown creases the space between his eyebrows. “Why did you need him, anyway?”

“None of your concern, not now,” Loki says, and it’s obvious that he’s distracted. “I won’t be needing your aid again, not any time soon.”

“What—”

“Goodbye for now, Fandral,” and Loki walks off, and Fandral does not call after him, though he desperately wants to.

He senses a change coming, not just in Loki but in that mortal he’s brought over, and he doesn’t like it. He doesn’t like any of it—especially not the way Loki looked at Tony, down in the lowest chambers of the castle. He glances at the shut door again, and considers going and warning Tony of all that Loki is capable of doing—but then why would he, when Tony is, to Fandral, a threat?

Sighing softly, he continues down the corridor to his own chambers, and, locking himself inside, pulls down several ancient tomes of Asgard’s history and begins to read.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize for the time it took to get this out - I'm really struggling with concentration lately. 
> 
> I hope everyone still enjoys it!


End file.
